XGI Volari V3XT Review

Wil Harris writes "bit-tech.net has reviewed the XGI Volari V3XT card, which XGI hope will compete with the low-end graphics cards from ATI and Nvidia. Unfortunately, it performs apallingly, with blue screens in Half-Life 2 and 10FPS in Doom 3. Whatever happened to all those XGI promises about having a market-leading card? What happened to their dual-GPU technology? This just shows how much catching up they have to do if they ever want to be a player, even in the low-end. Heck, even S3 stand a better chance than them right now."

Ugh

[TripMaster Monkey]

<sarcasm>

Wow, this card looks great! I think I'll get one of these and install it today!
Then, I'll subscribe to AOL, and pierce my testicles with a knitting needle...a hat-trick of self-loathing.

</sarcasm>

Seriously, how can any company put out a piece of junk like this and expect it to sell?

(From TFA:)

Xabre Graphics (XGI) is a name that many of us are not familiar with, so there's need for a brief history lesson to fill in a few gaps. XGI are the result of two of the many graphics vendo

Re:Ugh

[Jorkapp]

I would say "those who are looking for a fanless graphics card capable of hardware decoding and DX9 graphics." Then again, why not just buy a cheap Radeon 9550LE, underclock it, and disable the fan?

Re:Ugh

[Quattro Vezina]

Or buy a GeForce FX 5200. They can do DX9, they can do hardware decoding, and some cards come without fans. Even the models that do come with fans don't have powerful ones.

And unlike the Radeon, it will actually have decent drivers.

Re:Ugh

[forkazoo]

One warning - a full speed fx5200 or r9200 may be sold without a fan, but if you are at high altitude, or a warm place, it will likely overheat.

(I had a fanless Geforce card that worked fine in Chicago, but when I moved to Denver, I learned that the lower air pressure is just barely enough to make the heat sink not quite efficient enough, and I got crazy things. Added a slot fan and the problem went away.)

It's a ummm...driver issue!

[faloi]

Bombs like this are usually followed with reports of it being a driver issue. Or they might hear the "oh, you accidently got pre-release silicon" or something similar. A company like ATI or NVidia can usually survive a SNAFU like this, I doubt XGI will be so lucky.

Don't rule out the Taiwanese yet

[stunted]

Ever since SIS released its remarkable 735 chip-set I've been waiting (with not quite bated breath) for something remarkable from XGI. Maybe since they opened the source [slashdot.org] on volari they might be good candidates as a manufacturer for the open graphics project [slashdot.org] it also means they probably can't hide behind the old "driver issues" with out being discovered.

Failing that we have to wait for either Taiwanese ingenuity to produce the goods or the bean counters to shut them down.